A Celebration of the Radio Listening Hobby

Experiments with SDR Luigi Freitas Beating the Solar Minimum Doldrums Solar Minimums. Yes, they are a drag. We've been talking about the solar minimum for some time in the amateur radio community, but of course we are not the only ones affected by the lack of vigorous ionization. Shortwave radio is affected, utility monitoring is affected, as well as almost any signals dependent on the atmosphere for propagation. And yet . . . . The truth is there are always radio signals of one form or another traversing the sky, running along the ground, or shooting straight at us from

I confess to being quite excited! Not by the New Year so much (I've seen a lot of those come and go!), but by a new radio I received last night. The radio is a uBITX kit by HF Signals (http://www.hfsignals.com/index.php/ubitx/), covering the HF band for reception (yeah, shortwave!) and transmitting capabilities on the amateur bands up to 10 Watts. Here's a description by the manufacturer: The µBITX is a general coverage HF SSB/CW transceiver kit with features you NEED for operating ease, convenience and versatility. It works from 3 MHz to 30 MHz, with up to 10 watts on

Today a good friend of mine, Justin KE8COY, posted a link referencing a broadcast piece on Natural Radio - a reference to the radio signals produced naturally by the earth. The piece notes how it was Thomas Watson, co-inventor of the telephone, who first heard the earth's radio signals coming over a telephone test line strung up over the roofs of houses in Boston. The piece is fascinating, and opens up yet another aspect of radio I (and Justin) find fascinating. And yes I know I am using "fascinating" repeatedly to describe this aspect of the hobby, but it truly

Raspberry Pi and Amateur Radio For those who may be interested I have added a section in the Interesting Links and Books page with resources for using the Raspberry Pi for Amateur Radio Projects. This is not an extensive list, but some of the links are themselves extensive, and I suspect there is enough there to keep one busy for quite a while! Enjoy! 73, Robert

This build review of the TEN-TEC 1253 comes from an article I wrote some years ago for Monitoring Times. This was quite an interesting project to build, as it was my first real radio kit. I tried to take my time (unlike the model airplanes I built as a kid which always ended up with missing parts and "extra" glue - or was that extra parts and missing glue?!) in an effort to really understand the building stages. My reward was a radio which worked great from the start, and which will always hold a near and dear place in

As a kid I tried to learn about electronics the old fashioned way - tear something apart and try to put it back together. Unfortunately I did not have someone overseeing my explorations, and so very little was actually learned! If amateur and shortwave radio itself is an attempt to recapture something I really enjoyed when I was young, tinkering with electronics is even more so a fulfillment of something I sought as a child. Electronics, as it applies to the radio hobby, is almost as magical as the signals these radios receive. Antennas grab signals as they course through